So I stumbled upon a new style in the last few days. It started with a sketch I drew of remorse, which is a feeling I’ve been exploring. To draw remorse I leaned on a fascination I seem to have with round heads and fluid bodies and eyes that are no more than little arcs, but which capture so much. An eye like that can be wincing in pain or softly closed in care, and its hard to tell what makes all the difference.

Remorse (2019)

Anyway I drew remorse, and it had a little despair in it too, which was interesting for reasons my last three posts shed some light on. Then a few days later I was listening to this song called Even the Tiniest Flame by my friend Jordan Wainer. Its so beautiful. Jord is very much cut from the cloth of Leonard Cohen but with a deep connection to nature that flows in all of his music. I was listening and I saw this image in my minds eye of a man with a big hat that half covered his face. So I sat down to draw it in the same sketch style as despair. But what happened was that it lacks a certain depth, which was really what the image was about. So I just played around with some darker colours and thicker lines and discovered a new style. One that really speaks to me, and which I’ve since dived into on two more occasions. Once to draw a peacock for The Feeling Forest (which I’ve taken down from here because I’m going to send it to some publishers) and then to draw a grasshopper for the Grasshopper story.

Peacock (2019)

Anyway that’s the update, not particularly profound, or insightful, but I suppose that befits a new style more playful and curious.